Actually I do this on purpose to keep bots from spamming tells to me. Most games have a shiftclick option and if someone cant figure that out then I probably dont need to party with or join their guild.

Is this true? I recall getting spammed on a lowby BG twink with like 4 ascii in its name by gold spammers.

Interview with Stephen Reid on 10/17. He said you'd be hearing something about Surnames before launch. Hopefully they're in, as it was in Beta I was just making characters with my last name, so I could be Captain "X" as a Smuggler or Jedi "X" as a Counsular.

Originally Posted by Zarasthura

If you folks think that ascii characters are annoying, then you won't like seeing apostrophes in Chiss names. Which are pretty long from the getgo!

There's a difference between ASCII characters, which you have to actively look up to find the code, and hyphens and apostraphes which are easily found on your keyboard. ASCII characters just make whispering or inviting someone a pain, doubly so in SWTOR if they will exist.

It's true that special accented characters are an important part of language .. but 99% of players use them totally inappropriately.

For every one character called Amélie or Hallström, for example, there will be a hundred morons called something like XxLêġõlāsxX.

This is why a sector of the playerbase (I want to say "mature players"..) auto-ignore any avatar that uses ASCII codes. Statistically, it's a surefire way to save yourself from a lot of frustration and aggravation.

There's a difference between ASCII characters, which you have to actively look up to find the code, and hyphens and apostraphes which are easily found on your keyboard. ASCII characters just make whispering or inviting someone a pain, doubly so in SWTOR if they will exist.

Obviously there is a difference, but the basis that it's considered annoying still applies. Typing out a long ass name, then forgetting that you need to add in apostrophes in certain places, in order to invite somebody to guild or party is annoying too, no?

ASCII characters have their place in toon names, if someone had a IRL name and used it. Personally, I used ASCII characters liberally in WoW, both as a style and as a way to circumvent a name already taken. If someone wanted to invite me to party or guild, I would simply be told to send them a whisper and they'd shift click the name into the chat window.

I personally avoid people who have characters in their names which are not on my keyboard. Too much effort to find somebody who more likely than not is not the kind of person I want to be ealing with.

I know many of ou have brought up legitimate reasons why you might want to use these characters but from personal expirience you're the minority.

"I'll tell you something, my Tenchi, you know the carnival comes and goes. But if you wait for a while, it'll always come back to you, Tenchi."~Ryoko TENCHIxRYOKO FTW!

"The crystal is the heart of the blade. The heart is the crystal of the Jedi. The Jedi is the crystal of the Force.
The Force is the blade of the heart. All are intertwined. The crystal, the blade, the Jedi. You are one.

I hope they have some sort of system that allows names of characters who are retired / account has been closed to be reused. (IE if a character hasn't been logged in for a year, the name becomes available to be picked up / if they come back they would have to simply change their name)

Just think of the 1000's of wow-names that are stuck on lvl 1 random alts on accounts that haven't been active for years.

Just an idea

~~~ Side question, are we going to have our swtor.com names saved for our first character? Since my guild is getting transferred over etc, I was wondering about that

I like that idea, just have it where you have one unique username that everyone else can view you as, and then you can name your character whatever you'd like. The name would just be personal and it wouldn't matter if some non-active lvl 1 took it already